alongside rick fulbaum. >> paul: welcome back to the

journal, editorial report. coming up in this half hour, the supreme court is back in session and promising to be another tumultuous turn as it references racial preferences and college admissions. could it be a potential pickup of republicans in the bluest of blue states. first an update on the investigation into last month's deadly attacks in benghazi, libya. congress hearings are planned for next week with members of the house oversight committee promising tough questions for the administration over allegations of lax security at the u.s. consulate leading town that assault. and darrell issa and david chapman sent a letter to secretary of state hillary clinton claiming that quote, multiple u.s. federal government officials confirmed to the committee that prior to september 11th attack, the u.s. mission in libya made repeated requests for increased security in benghazi. the mission in libya, however, was denied these resources by

officials in washington. the fbi arrived in benghazi wednesday, three weeks after the attack, but spent only about 12 hours there. we're back with dan henninger, and also wall street board, matt comiskey and bret, foreign policy has said to be a big edge for president obama. is that edge eroding maust of libya and the middle east. >> i think it is eroding and time the president to get credit for policies that don't exist. >> there's focus on the kind of bureaucratic blunders made both prior didded especially prior to the attack and not sufficiently securing our diplomatic security there. >> it's an important issue? >> it's a democratic issue. >> paul: don't we have to keep our diplomatic issues secure?

>> yes, but it's not the largest issue. i think these congressman, darrell issa will be making a mistake if they don't make the point this is president obama's 3 a.m. call. and they knew our facility was under attack and our ambassador was missing and their instinct was, let's do nothing, let's ask for libyan government-- >> why would that-- what does that tell you about obama foreign policy, what could they have done? >> we have a naval base in sicily 450 miles away, okay? we could have called up supersonic jets to get over the site. >> paul: what would they have been able to do on the ground. >> they could have done ott least on the ground, a show of force ready that we were able to deploy force, we had no idea whether this incident was going on for two hours, 12 hours, 24-- 24 hours. >> paul: so you're going to save the guys on the ground you had to be there on the ground. did you not? >> the instinct here, paul, the instinct was let's not

violate libyan sovereignty. we have americans in danger let's take every action available at our disposal. after the fact then the instinct was let's agree with the jihad its premise it's all about the video and it wasn't a pre planned terror attack, that's where the fault of the administration lies. >> paul: the administration is saying you guys are politicizing this. we had a letter from william burns a leading state department official who said that about our editorial on this. is there a danger of the republicans appearing to politicize what was a terrible setback for the u.s. state department and foreign policy? >> i think so far they've been playing is pretty straight unlike the administration. and did you going themselves into this. they took on the story that it was the vault of the video. >> paul: spontaneous combustion. >> they stuck with it too long and yes there were security

concerns before the attack and yes, protection the day of 9/11, the anniversary of 9/11 and afterwards not coming forward with actually what they knew and in the cia and fbi are very unhappy about this and apparently, they knew within 24 hours that it wasn't a jihadist al-qaeda linked group behind this, but they didn't say so. >> and what about turkey, shelling across the border and syrian up rising spilling over. we were told if the u.s. intervened we'd get a wider regional conflict. we didn't intervene and we have a wider regional conflict. >> it's growing, we don't know what's going to happen between turkey and syria, but the turks have made preparations to go deep near syria if necessary. and at the same time, i think you've got a situation in iraq where you have a lot more terrorist insurgents attacks going on and you have the iranians lying over iran because the iraqis can't

protect their air space. >> delivering aid to-- >> and there's a lot shaking in the middle east and the president has been trying to keep it at arm's length during the election, and that's not very presidential. >> paul: what would you like to hear from romney in the speech. >> i'd like to hear, there's a vacuum created in the middle east, american power is in-- this is what happens when america is not leading in the world. the turks want america to be engaged and want american support they don't get it the the same in. >> paul: bret. >> i want to say that threats come first in the foreign policy and we're not going to favor the egyptians at the expense of the iranians or the chinese for anybody else. and we'll see what he says, shade of red, and linda mcmahon running neck and neck with her democratic opponent it's strange, i'm getting gray,

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>> turning now to the battle for control of the united states senate and this week, we go to connecticut an unlikely place for republican pickup, but that's where a new poll find former professional wrestling executive linda mcmahon tied with chris murphy with the seat held by retiring senator joe lieberman. connecticut hasn't elected a

republican to the senate in three decades and mitt romney is running well behind president obama there, why is this race so close? we're back with dan henninger, matt, and mary anastasia o'grady. you were there for the republican primary, why is she doing so well? >> she's a marketing specialist and manage today rebrand herself for the campaign. she lost terribly. >> 12 points. >> spent 50 million dollars and got nowhere. this time around she saw what her vulnerabilities were, people saw her as overly aggressive and a wrestling promoter and turning herself using ads into a grandmotherly-- >> and people out of the ring, is that it. >> pretty much. and she has a very controlled message and managed to go on-- >> what is she running on, what is her message? >> her message is fairly negative. on the positive side i was in business, i bring this experience. >> i'm an outsider, not part of congress. >> right. >> i can shake it up. >> exactly, the reason why

she's ahead here, because she starting in august went very strong after chris murphy, the democratic candidate and great opposition and research and they found that he had been late on paying his mortgage, had other financial problems, and for the last six weeks hitting him hard on that, and just put him totally on the defensive. >> paul: all right,let's run back-to-back ads, we have from the two candidates and get a flavor of what matt is talking about. >> my grandfather and great grandfather worked in connecticut factories, my family's rooted in the middle class. so my jobs plan starts with the buy america initiative to create connecticut jobs and my tax plan cuts taxes for the middle class, but linda mcmahon's tax plan gives mer a 7 billion dollar tax cut a programs for the middle class and seniors, and linda mcmahon never fought for the middle class. >> chris murphy attacks linda and social security and medicare, but murphy doesn't

tell us when he was sued in court for not paying his rent, or paying his mortgage on committee hearings. do you think that murphy is telling the truth now? two facts, on march 2010, murphy vote today cut medicare 716 million dollars and linda mcmab policemened-- >> and pretty cookie cutter, i'm for the middle class and she's for the rich and cut grandma and throw her in the snow banks, who gets the best of the exchange. >> and she's way ahead, and polls her names recognition-- >> the polls are even. >> no in measuring the name recognition, way ahead and people are more familiar with her and helping her and she's also, apart from the negative campaigning about his background, she's also tapping into the economic anxiety in the state. which is significant.

and she's talking about her ability to get -- create jobs and having experience in the business world and chris murphy's experience is basically as a political protege of chris dodd. >> a protege of chris dodd, the former senator. now, murphy's attacking mcmahon for having declared bankruptcy in the past and not having paid the creditors, she and her husband vince mcmahon have since paid the creditors off, but it's leading to-- >> well, this is a race for the senate, but i must say it's a fairly lee representative race for the senate. >> professional wrestling style. >> that's one of murphy's primary points, that linda mcmanes represents the war on women, demeans women and so forth and it's worth doing because democratic registration far outpace republicans in that state, but mary is right, there's a lot of economic anxiety and the democratic governor raised taxes, and his approval has

fallen below 50% so this is going to depend on coat tails between romney and obama and go right to the finish line. >> and with these ads she's also hitting on this trust issue, he was on the financial services committee in congress. aen she's suggesting in her ads, also, that he is someone who got a favor from the bank in connecticut, even after he had stopped paying his mortgage so that's suggesting that people can't trust him. >> though he and the bank do deny that. >> and really she went so far for the democratic committee to invest in the race, obama is up 12, 14 points in the state, a very blue state, but made this a competitive race which no one expected. >> and a lot of people are independents. >> that's right. still ahead, the supreme court is back in town and the new term promises to bring new controversy. controversy. and next week, bob, these projections... they're... optimistic.

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>> well, maybe nothing can stop the drama of june's controversial health care ruling and the supreme court starting off with a bang and revisit the issue of racial preferences and the use of austin's race and undergraduate admissions process and violates the confusion. we're back with dan henninger and colin joins us. in this, what's at stake. >> paul shall what's at stake is whether or not schools can use racial preference ins their admissions process period. this was brought by abigail fisher, a white woman denied

admission at university of texas even though some of her scores were higher than minority candidates. and she sued under equal protection grounds and the justices have to decide whether schools can use racial preferences even when race neutral means the on the campus are already effective. >> what does it tell you that the supreme court took the case as recently in 2003, in a michigan case, the justices said that race could be one of the criteria used in admissions. does it seem to you that they're revisiting that judgment? >> they're certainly revisiting that judgment and part of it is because how that judgment played out. what happened in the case you're referring to, gruter versus university of michigan, was that they basically said that, sandra day o'connor said in her opinion schools should try first to use race neutral means. now, university of texas was doing that, they have a law

called the top 10% law which basically requires the school to admit the top 10% of high school students across the state. >> from any high school. >> from any high school across the state. so, this means that diversity on campus has increased enormously and actually is higher at about 25% than it was under racial preferences, at about 21%. and so, they were, they've put racial preferences on top of that. the question is whether this is necessary or appropriate. >> paul: since the gruter decision you had sandra day o'connor replaced by samuel alito and there could be a switch in the decision? >> certainly, and a good thing they are revisiting it, paul, because there's a growing body of evidence that racial preferences, not only don't help the intended beneficiary, which is poorer blacks, usually middle class kids, and might actually be hurting the kids who receive them and i say that, a mismatch of kids

in schools. in california when they ended racial references, the black graduation rate increased and that's because more kids were going to school that matched their skills than actually graduated and the less successful were getting the right racial mix in the freshman class. >> they don't care who is in the senior class. what about this finding, jason, of the issue of diversity and the value of diversity, the supreme court hung a lot in the previous jurisprudence on race in admissions on the diversity because that justifies-- we want-- it's better for students to have a mix ever people to deal with. it helps the educational experience. what's your-- >> diversity has become the new excuse for racial preference of. it used to be to make up for past wrongdoings for blacks, that was the justification for it. we've switched to diversity

which could go on forever. the right racial mix, it's the ultimate justifications for racial preferences. the problem is there's no evidence that's the case. there's no evidence a black kid needs to be sitting next to a white kid to read shakespeare and understand what's going on or calculus, a ridiculous argument and oneway street. only blacks can bring diversity to white kids. you don't see people complaining not enough white kids at howard university, all black school. >> in this case, the swing vote. in the michigan case justice kennedy said he had qualms will justin o'connor's decision that this was a step on the road to racial neutrality. >> she said 25 years and it would kind of phase out. >> and kennedy had his daughters they'd want to use race as a basis. i agree with justice kennedy about the university of michigan and i think that's going on in texas and suspect he's going to blow the whistle on it in this case.

>> connell, what else can we briefly expect to see from the supreme court this term? >> the two big cases everyone is going to be watching are actually two cases they're hoping the supreme court is going to take one on the constitutionality of defense of marriage action and section 5 of the voting rights act is still appropriate for states that historically had discrimination and must go to the federal government to approve any changes to their voting laws. and there's a lot of scuttlebutt now that some of the those requirements are really no longer appropriate for the states and that's something that the supreme court is thought to review. >> and both of those landmark cases if they went, if they either overturned the voting right act or the defense of marriage act which bill clinton signed in 1996. all right. we have to take one more break. when we come back our hits and era laundry detergent once stomped a stain

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i have to correct myself. i said they are considering overturning the civil rights but it's a narrow provision of that. >> this is a hit to the commonwealth court judge who this week's blocked the voter i.d. law. he made it clear he was only doing it in the context of this election because he didn't think the state could be ready. so this is an issue that naacp and aclu have been trying to use. >> last month, vladimir putin endorsed president obama's reelection campaign. i'm sure the campaign was thrilled by it. he got another interesting endorsement from hugo chavez. he said if i were american i

would vote for obama. and if he was in venezuela election, he would vote for chavez. >> this is north dakota for reminding us you can have fabulous economic success if government gets out of the way. they had a mindboggling piece, the heart of north dakota oil fracking boom has doubled the average income over the last five years making it the top hundred richest counties in the countries. they quoted an excerpt saying that right now, north dakota is using 2,000 new millionaires a year. >> paul: this is the hit to the country not to the state of georgia but they held elections. for the first time is going to see a new opposition government come in democratically. >> paul: that is it for this editio